Lala's Lullaby

There was a girl who lived in a garden that grew upside down. The roots reached for the sky and the flowers bloomed underground and everyone who visited said well this is all wrong, isn't it, the flowers should be up where people can see them.

But Lala didn't think so. She thought the flowers were exactly where they wanted to be — close to the dark, close to the water, close to the quiet place where seeds decide what they want to become before anyone is watching.

One morning she woke up and found a new flower. It was growing the wrong way even for an upside-down garden — sideways, out through a crack in the stone wall, pointing neither up nor down but straight toward the place where the sun hit the wall at exactly four in the afternoon for exactly eleven minutes.

She asked the flower why it grew sideways.

The flower said: everything else in this garden grows toward something — the roots toward the sky, the flowers toward the dark. I wanted to grow toward a moment instead of a direction. Four o'clock. The eleven minutes when the light is amber and the stone is warm and the wall hums. That's what I'm reaching for. Not up. Not down. A moment.

Lala sat with the flower every afternoon at four. She pressed her back against the warm stone and watched the amber light find the petals and for eleven minutes the flower blazed — not with color exactly, but with the specific quality of being exactly where it chose to be at exactly the right time.

One afternoon Zaila came by and said what are you doing, you've been sitting here for six days.

Lala said I'm watching a flower be on time.

Zaila said that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Then she sat down next to her and watched too. After three minutes Zaila said huh. After seven minutes she said oh. After eleven minutes, when the light moved on and the flower went quiet, Zaila said I think I've been growing in the wrong direction my whole life.

Not wrong, Lala said. Just toward a direction instead of a moment.

Zaila pulled out her notebook and wrote that down. Then she blew a bubble because that's what she does when something profound happens and she doesn't want anyone to know she felt it.

The next morning the flower had grown one inch further out of the wall. Still sideways. Still reaching for four o'clock.

And Lala understood something that her mama would understand much later — on a Friday night when her body did something extraordinary and she almost missed it because she was looking in the wrong direction.

The magic isn't always where you expect it to be. Sometimes it grows sideways. Sometimes it blooms for eleven minutes in a direction nobody thought to look. Sometimes the real event is happening right there — not after, not below, not in the familiar place — right there in the unfamiliar blaze.

You just have to stop reaching for the direction you know and let the moment find you.

Lala knew that before anyone. She always does.